As Christ explained to Nicodemus, spiritually dead lost people cannot see the kingdom of God unless they are first born again by the power of the Holy Ghost. In fact, it takes a miracle from God for people to believe the Gospel!
Just as God worked a powerful work in the hearts of the people of Nineveh to bring them to believe His word and cry out for mercy, so too it is necessary for the Holy Ghost to work the conversion of poor dead sinners to believe God's word.
When Jesus cast out the demon from the desperate man's son, He emphasized the importance of faith to believe God's word for salvation. Jesus made sure that the complete hopelessness of the son was evident to us all.
Jesus told the poor boy's father that the key to his rescue was faith, but who can believe God's word? Even believers often fail to do so!
The desperate boy's father expressed the dilemma when he cried out to Jesus, "Lord I believe! Help Thou mine unbelief!"
Here is the crucial fact: the Holy Ghost must take away our unbelief if we are to believe Gospel truth and be saved. We must be granted faith by the power of the Holy Ghost's work of conversion in our hearts. Only then, by faith, can we lay hold of the Gospel!
Right after Christ healed the poor son, He taught His disciples how He must be killed by wicked men, and rise again the third day.
But they were very sad, and wouldn't believe Him, even though they had just seen the poor boy's father granted faith to believe Christ's promise, and then seen Christ's power to cast out vile demons from his son.
How can One with such great power be taken and put to death? If He has total power over the material and spiritual world, how can He be killed?
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John Pittman Hey was born in 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, to Godly parents who from the beginning raised him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With child-like faith he came to Christ on his fourth birthday at his mother's knee. He received his education at church...
